


Accidental Bears

by danceswithronin



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bull's Chargers, Dalish, Gen, Origin Story, Toro - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithronin/pseuds/danceswithronin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of a young Dalish mage driven into exile, and the dwarven woodsman who accidentally saves her life on purpose. An exploration of the life of Dalish before she met The Iron Bull and Bull's Chargers. Now with flaming great bears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental Bears

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [With Her Bow](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/140795) by AnArtistCalledRed. 



When Toro woke up, the first thing he heard was screaming, shrill enough to startle him out of the tree stand he was dozing in if he wasn’t a somewhat unflappable son of a bitch.

 _“Help me! Help!”_ The note of sheer unadulterated terror in the cry was as invigorating as a dash of ice water in the face, and Toro was scrambling for his bow and dagger before he even looked blearily over the edge of the stand. 

A great bear had someone pinned up against the base of an adjacent tree. It was too far to see any faces through the darkening, intermittent canopy of the large forest trees, but the high shriek had sounded suspiciously like a child. _Nugshit._

Toro climbed quickly out onto a limb so he could get a better view, sticking his dagger in his teeth so he’d have both hands free. Just as he peered back down, there was a loud _FOOOMP_ noise and a flash of blue light bright enough to leave trails behind his vision when he closed his eyes. Toro cried out in shock out of a clenched jaw and almost did fall out of the tree then, teetering dangerously. He windmilled his arms before clinging to the limb in desperation, hugging it to his chest with bruising force, his bow tumbling through the branches to land in the grass where the great bear was now rolling around in a frenzied attempt to douse its flaming fur. Its roars of fury had changed pitch to cries of panic and pain. But it would refocus on the child soon enough. 

“Oh sod it,” Toro moaned around the dagger in his teeth and jostled for a better position, aiming carefully as he took the knife in hand. 

Then he dropped from the branch like a stone.

~~~

The elven girl winced at the bear’s incoming swipe, seeing its eyes reflecting in the fading blue glow of the crystal on her staff. The bear had already caught her a glancing blow across the face, staggering her, and she was all but blind with flowing blood. In her hunger-weakened state, the last spell she’d cast took everything she had. 

Now she waited to die.

A dark form dropped onto the bear’s shoulders and the beast’s roar turned to a strange yodeling noise. Suddenly the bulk of the animal crashed forward in the dusky light with a dying groan, dropping with boneless dead weight, pinning the girl to the tree. She opened her mouth to scream and found it full of hot stinking fur. Its weight was too heavy for her to take a breath. She felt a small callused hand reach beneath the edge of the bear’s torso, scrabbling at her shoulder, and she shifted as much as she could to grasp it with all her strength. A few hard tugs that made her arm felt like it was loose in the socket and she was free, gasping on a patch of moss next to—

She scrambled away from the bear and the bear’s attacker. Her staff was still pinned under the bear’s body, but—

 _“Stay back!”_ the girl cried, holding her glowing hands out at Toro’s prone form in an unspoken threat. 

The dwarf sat up, dusting himself off before cocking an amused eye at the bedraggled girl. He now had time to notice the pointed ears and the facial tattoos too. _Explains a little. Not a lot, though._

“Kid, not to tell you your business,” Toro said, standing up and moving past the frightened girl to wrench his dagger out from the nape of the bear’s neck, “but what in the name of Andraste’s smoking tits is a little slip of a thing like you doing out in the middle of the woods all alone?” 

“I’m on a quest,” the girl answered primly, walking up to the bear’s corpse to try and work her staff free. “The Keeper wants me to learn more of the world.” 

“You’re ten years old if you’re a day.” Toro wasn’t able to keep a note of disgust out of his voice. _A Dalish kid wandering the forest alone with a staff?_ Toro had started to put two and two together, and the clues painted an ugly picture. 

The girl scowled at him. “I’m twelve. I’m considered an adult among my people.” _Thank you very much,_ her tone added. 

“So the People start some kind of pilgrimage ritual when I wasn’t looking? Because you’re too young to be wandering out here by yourself, Dalish or no. What’s your name, kid?” 

The girl managed to get her staff free and inspected it for damage. When she found none, she turned to look at the dwarf, drawing herself up to her full height. Her bright eyes regarded him through the terrible wounds on her face.

“Our ways are not for outsiders, dwarf. Nor our names,” she said, stiffly. “What do you know of Dalish rituals? Besides, I can take care of myself.”

Toro glanced at the great bear, then back at her lacerated face, raising an eyebrow. “Obviously. Well, my name is Toro. And I may not know much about Dalish, kid, but I know it looks like they’ve tossed you out on your ass from where I’m standing. Did you set that bear on fire?” It was a stupid question, with the bear’s singed pelt still smoking in the twilight gloom, but Toro wanted to hear the girl say it aloud.

A flash of fear crossed her face, and she broke his gaze, staring at her feet. “No.”

Toro rolled his eyes. “Right. _Very convincing._ I’m sure the Chantry will believe you. Think you could do it again?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice casual.

The girl hesitated a moment, looking back up at him, her entire face a question mark, then nodded.

Toro smirked. “Good. Much more important question — think you can _not_ do it until someone tells you to?”

She nodded again, stronger this time.

“Good. Because you’re an apostate, you know,” Toro replied, his voice growing serious as he looked at her. He wiped the bear’s blood from his dagger and resheathed it, then went to collect his bow where it’d fallen in the grass. _Not broken. Good._

“What’s an apostate?”

Toro stopped what he was doing to look at her again, not sure if she was having him on. One look at the puzzled eyes that gazed back at him from the mask of blood on the girl’s face told him she was not.

“Uh… nevermind that,” he said, uncomfortable now. He’d never known anyone who _didn’t_ know what an apostate was. “I just wouldn’t carry that staff around in any villages if I were you. Might end up with a room with a view in the White Spire.” 

She glared at him. “I don’t know where that is, but I know nobody is taking me anywhere.”

Toro laughed. “Last words of apostates everywhere.” He set about field-dressing the bear in the failing light, working mostly by touch. The pelt was ruined by fire, but the hide would still be good for leather, and there was more meat than even a dwarf and an elf together could pack and carry. 

He expected the elven girl to melt back into the woods as quickly as she’d appeared, now that the present danger was past, but instead she laid her staff on the bloodied moss and crouched beside him where he hunkered down to part fur and flesh with his blade. She watched him work with a kind of grim, exhausted fascination, and out of the corner of his eye he saw blood streaming from the girl’s face in coin-sized drops that soaked the soil at her feet black. 

“I’ve got some bandages and salves in my pack, but it’s still up the tree,” Toro said without looking up at her. “Don’t know what kind of shape you’re in to climb.” 

“Why are you helping me?”

Toro finally did look up at the girl’s quiet question. She was looking at the bear, not at him.

He considered a moment, then shrugged, chuckling. “Why not?” He tapped the casteless tattoo on his cheek. “Us pariahs need to stick together, no?”

She didn’t answer, but Toro heard a soft sniffling noise near his shoulder, and thought it best to drop the subject of exile for now. 

They worked in silence for a while, the elven girl packing away the meat as Toro handed it to her. It was almost full dark by the time they finished. 

“That’s the best we can do, I think,” the dwarf said, straightening up to pop a crick in his back. While he folded up the hide, the girl climbed up the tree to the stand and retrieved his pack, though she didn’t open it, only laid it gently at the tree’s base.

“Think you can carry some of this meat?” Toro asked, shouldering the gory hide. “We need to make camp elsewhere. This carcass might bring other things we’d rather not make friends with in the dark. And you need a stream to wash your face.”

The girl shouldered her share of the supplies and followed the dwarf obediently, eyeing the bear’s corpse as they passed it by.

“Ever eat bear?” Toro asked cheerfully in an attempt to make conversation. The silence with which the girl padded along behind him was unnerving. 

“No.”

“Oh, right, you’re an elf. Probably drink moonlight and eat the giggles of your ancestors or something. In any case, I have some onions and carrots and potatoes, and it makes a fine stew in a pinch. I certainly won’t turn my nose up at accidental bear. It’s not halla, but still.”

“You eat _halla?”_

“Princess, I eat anything on the hoof that’s slower than me.”

The girl snorted, but diplomatically did not reply. They traveled on in a somewhat comfortable silence for another half hour until Toro first heard and then saw a creek, sparkling in the light of the newly risen stars. 

“Thank the Paragons,” he muttered. “This will do as well as any place I suppose.” He sat down the bundles of still-warm meat and hide he carried and moved off to gather kindling. The girl laid down her pack near his. “If I get the makings of a fire together, you think you have enough juice left to spark it?”

“I think so.”

“Good, because I’m too sodding tired to rub sticks together.” 

He quickly gathered a stack of firewood and arranged it artfully, standing back and looking at the girl.

“She’s all yours, Dalish.”

The girl narrowed her eyes at the stack of kindling and it flared up. The dwarf laughed, delighted, and held his hands up to the flames as they faded from blue to a bright flickering orange, casting the surrounding trees in dancing shadow. 

“That’s a good trick,” Toro said, grinning. “You know, without the inherent threat of demon possession and all that.” 

“The Dalish are not as weak as shemlen and flat ears,” the girl replied, her voice somewhat miffed. “We do not become possessed by demons.”

“Not what _I’ve_ heard.” _And if that’s the case, my little blonde friend, why did they cast you out?_

“Well since your kind spends most of their life hiding under rocks, I wouldn’t look to you to keep me up to date on that sort of thing.” 

He held his hands up in a placating gesture of surrender, still laughing quietly. “You’re the boss, Dalish.” In the firelight, now that they were safe, Toro could see how terribly young the girl was, how her cheekbones stood out sharply in her face. Young, and starving now. Her vallaslin was vivid on her pale cheeks, the bright green ink still new and fresh. The dwarf walked over to the creek and soaked one of his cloths in it, then held it up as he moved back beside her where she sat cross-legged, watching him. “May I?”

She hesitated again for a moment, and Toro was reminded of the way a deer will freeze for half a second before fleeing, its tail held high in a white flashing star of alarm. 

But the girl didn’t run, only shrugged. Toro wiped the gore from her gaping wounds, causing them to bleed afresh. Once her face was clean of clotted blood and dirt, he pressed a new damp cloth to her face. “Hold this here. Press down hard and don’t stop until I say so. I’m going to boil some water and we’ll do this properly.” 

“It hurts,” the girl said, sullen. _Oh, there’s the teenager,_ Toro thought.

“A great bear slapped you in the face. ‘It hurts’ is the best outcome you can expect in that scenario. Means you lived. What’d you do to rile him so anyway?” Toro asked as he hung a pot of water over the fire. After he used some of the hot water to finish cleaning the girl’s face, the rest would serve as a base to braise the bear meat. 

“I was just looking for a place to sleep.” 

“In a bear cave?”

The girl’s tone was as wry as Toro's when she answered. “If I’d known it had a bear in it, I would have looked for a different one.”

The dwarf rinsed the blood from his hands in the creek when he was done doctoring her, and began methodically setting up the tent while he gave the girl’s wounds time to clot. She held the cloth to her face, watching him out of one eye as she pressed the bandage over the other one. The tent was a bit small for two, being dwarf-sized and built for one, but it was a cold night. They’d manage. He chopped up some onions, potatoes, and carrots, tossed them in a pile to go in the pot after he was done tending the girl's injuries. The stew would simmer while they slept.

“Yeah, well if you’re going to survive out here in the big bad world without your clan, Dalish, you better wise up quick. You’d be residing in a bear’s gullet right now in so many delectable pieces if you hadn’t managed to stumble under the right tree.” He straightened a tent stake. “You walk into a village with knife ear ink on your face and a mage’s staff in your hands, they’ll have you on a pyre before the templars can say Maker’s breath.”

Toro felt as much as saw the elven girl go still with fear, looking even smaller than she had before. “So what should I do then?” 

“Deny, deny, deny. Anyone asks you why you’re carrying a mage’s staff, you tell them it’s a bow. They ask you what _kind_ of bow, you tell them it’s none of their sodding business unless they want the business end of it. Got it?” 

The girl looked over at where her staff lay, her expression dubious. “I don’t think anyone’s going to believe that.”

Toro secured the tent flap open, turning back to warm his hands by the fire. The water in the small kettle he’d hung there was beginning to bubble, and he took it off the fire so that it would not be too hot to use when he cleaned and stitched the girl’s wounds. “You’d be surprised. Humans are pretty stupid.”

“I have a hard time imagining anyone being _that_ stupid.”

“Come here.” Toro patted the ground next to him near the fire and she settled beside him again. He pulled out a roll of catgut and fresh bandages and set about stitching the girl’s swelling face. She was starting to look like she’d gotten in a bar brawl with a demon. To her credit, she flinched only a little and cried out not at all until the gashes were all sealed and smeared over with an elfroot salve that glistened in the firelight. “We’ll practice. If I say, ‘Hey kid, why are you carrying a staff? You some kind of a mage?’ What will you say?”

“It’s not a staff, it’s a bow.”

“Again. Give me a definite note of sarcasm this time. The goal is to make the person feel a fool for even asking you such a dumb question. The thing is, they can’t prove you’re a mage until you do magic in front of them, so as long as you have plausible deniability you’re in the clear. So what’s up with that staff, Dalish?”

“It’s not a _staff,_ it’s a _bow.”_

Toro laughed. “Better. Keep practicing. You want to keep that staff, you better say it until you believe it yourself. And whatever you do, you keep fire out of your fist whenever we get near a village. I don’t care how mad you get or what kind of trouble we’re in or what anybody says to you. We clear?”

_We. He said we._

The girl nodded at him, gracing him with a small smile. He smiled back and stood, stretching. “Well I don’t know about you, but I think I’m about ready to hit the sack. We have a long road ahead of us tomorrow and we’ll have to unload this bear hide in a market somewhere first, because I’m sure as hell not going to be smelling it the whole way.” He placed the pot back over the and threw the chopped vegetables and bear meat in it with a sachet of herbs from his sack.

“Where are we going?” Dalish asked. The question was shy. 

“Nevarra. Come to bed when you get tired.” The dwarf let himself into the tent and let the flap fall closed behind him. 

He wondered whether she would stay, but a few moments later the girl stepped into the tent barefoot, scooting over to the edge of the tent so she could sleep without touching him, curled up almost like a cat.

There was silence for a few minutes except for the despondent hooting of an owl, and Toro was almost asleep again when he heard the girl’s voice. 

“What’s in Nevarra?”

“Contact of mine,” Toro said, his voice foggy with impending sleep. “His people call him Hissrad. Folks I know just call him The Iron Bull. Might even have you some work, Dalish, if you’re of a mind.” 

“Toro?” 

“Mm-hm.”

“Thank you for saving my life.” The girl’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper.

“You’re quite welcome. Now go to sleep. You only think those cuts hurt tonight. By tomorrow morning they’ll be singing Orlesian ballads in honor of your stupidity.” 

The dwarf said no more, and soon Dalish heard his breaths steady and even out into soft rumbling snores. She knew she could sneak off now easily enough, but where would she go? Stranger or no, she could not help but feel a little safer with the stout dwarf sleep-grumbling beside her. Not to speak of the fact that she had literally seen the dwarf drop out of a tree onto a great bear’s head. A bit of a smartass, maybe, but his skills in battle obviously left nothing to be desired. 

Feeling the elfroot salve knock the pain in her face down to a dull, bearable throb, she felt her aching muscles relax and her mind wander. She had never seen Nevarra, nor any other human village. This was the furthest she’d ever been from home. But the name the dwarf spoke had a ring of destiny to it, and she repeated it to herself in her mind as she drifted off into sleep, like a promise. 

_The Iron Bull._


End file.
